The Duke of York reappeared in London. During his absence from the court, he had exercised in Scotland a harsh and perfidious authority. The rigor to which the Nonconformists had been subjected had excited the hot-headed. A preacher named Cameron, a name still remembered among his partisans, had raised the banner of revolt against a king faithless to the Protestant religion and the government to which he had sworn. He was killed in an engagement. His successor, Donald Cargill, was arrested and soon afterwards executed with a large number of his disciples. Men and women walked to the scaffold singing songs of triumph. The Scotch Parliament instituted an oath of submission to the royal authority, which went so far as to require passive obedience. Fletcher of Saltoun and Lord Stair demanded the insertion of a clause for the protection of the Protestant religion. {385} The Duke of York would not sanction it under this form. When it was proposed to dispense with it, Lord Belhaven declared that the utility of the oath was to exclude Papists from the succession; he was sent to prison. The Earl of Argyll, son of him who had been executed at the commencement of the reign, made some reservation in taking the oath of submission; he was arrested in his turn. The Duke of York disclaimed on his part any sinister intention towards him. "God forbid that the life and fortune of the earl should be imperilled," he said. Yet on the 12th of December, Argyll was condemned by a jury presided over by the Marquis of Montrose. He was assured of the royal pardon; but the earl put no faith in the protestation of his enemies. The Duke of York refused to grant him an audience. Argyll escaped, disguised in the attire of the page of his daughter-in-law. Lady Sophia Lindsay. Condemned, _per contumaciam_, to all the horrors of the punishment of traitors, his property had been confiscated, and his children declared unworthy of their inheritance; but the king, more considerate and wiser than his advisers, returned a part of his fortune to Lord Lome, the eldest son of the earl. The latter prudently remained in Holland. The Duke of Monmouth did not act with the same wisdom. When he found the Duke of York established at the court, recognized again as Lord High Admiral and lodged by the king in St. James's Palace, he regarded as void the promise he had given to remain on the Continent so long as his rival should govern in Scotland, and returning to London without the king's permission, was received with exclamations of joy by the people. {386} Leaving the city with a cortege almost regal, he journeyed slowly through the kingdom, received by the gentry and by deputations from the towns, mixing with the crowd wherever he went with a proud but amicable and popular condescension, and saluted on the road by the enthusiastic cries of "Monmouth! Monmouth!"